DEER LODGE - A convicted murderer who escaped the hangman's
noose in the 1950s, skipped out on parole 38 years ago and was
found recently running a wedding chapel in Arizona under an assumed
name will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

The state Board of Pardons and Parole on Friday revoked the parole
of Frank Dryman, 78, and said they won't even look at the case
again for another five years. The panel indicated leniency isn't
likely then, either.

Dryman was arrested March 23 in Arizona City, Ariz., where he was
living a full life as Victor H. Houston, running a wedding chapel,
working as a notary public and volunteering for various
causes.

He was convicted of killing Clarence Pellett, who had picked up
Dryman as a 19-year-old drifter caught in a snowstorm outside
Shelby in northern Montana. His murder trial captivated headlines
during the decade, twice going to the Montana Supreme Court before
his original sentence to face the gallows in front of the county
courthouse was overturned. Dryman was given as life sentence
instead.

He was paroled in 1969 after serving just 15 years in prison and
three years later, he disappeared.

Dryman told the board Friday he skipped out on his parole in
California because he needed to get away from the woman he was
married to at the time.

"I didn't want to create any violence or anything, I don't believe
in that anymore, so I just left," he said.

The grandson of the victim tracked Dryman down after only recently
learning the way his grandfather had been murdered.

Clem Pellett told the parole board that he found through research
that his father very quietly kept tabs on the case and represented
the family at the numerous court and other hearings during the
1950s and 1960s. Pellett said his father died shortly before Dryman
was paroled, and had he been alive, Dryman may not have received
that early parole.

"A year ago I unknowingly picked up my fathers' mantle," said
Pellett, a surgeon in Bellevue, Wash., who has since amassed
volumes of information on the case and Dryman, who has gone by
several names.

A large group of Pelletts and their family members attended the
hearing. They pointed out that the same board, four decades ago,
was warned by a judge in the case that it was a bad idea to parole
Dryman to California.

Several in the family testified that the murder, although nearly 60
years old, forever changed the family. Many said the family always
missed its patriarch, and several lived in fear as children after a
young Dryman allegedly vowed at one court hearing to kill the whole
family.

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Generations later, young members of the family are warned never to
pick up hitchhikers.

"I thought that this was a particularly heinous crime," said Bob
Pellett. "I believe the man is a sociopath. He does not deserve any
leniency."

Dryman's daughter, Kathy Houston, who knew nothing of her father's
past, pleaded with the board for leniency.

She fell to the floor sobbing as the board's intention grew clear
and eventually needed to be taken out in a wheelchair. Houston said
the original crime is not on trial and urged the board to consider
that Dryman's only crime was to skip out on parole.

"For my natural life, my father has been the pillar of a community
that loves him," she said. "He has volunteered for everything he
could volunteer for."

Houston, who said her father is in very poor health, said he won't
live another five years to see the parole board again.

The parole board said prison doctors found Dryman to be very fit
and capable of serving his sentence.

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